INDIA'S MANNED MOON MISSION

The move comes after top officials of IAF's Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) announced on December 27 in New Delhi that India was planning a manned mission to Moon, and that an MoU was recently signed between the IAF and Isro for the joint project.

MUMBAI: As 2014 kicks in, Isro and the Indian Air Force are caught in a row over the Moon.An Isro statement on Tuesday, firmly denying IAF top medical brass' claims about a joint manned-Moon mission, raised many eyebrows.

The move comes after top officials of IAF's Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) announced on December 27 in New Delhi that India was planning a manned mission to Moon, and that an MoU was recently signed between the IAF and Isro for the joint project.

On Sunday, Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan had told TOI that there was absolutely no truth in the statements made by two top IAF officials. "We have no plans of launching a manned mission to the Moon," he said.

Earlier on Friday, in an interview to a TV channel, DG of medical services Air Marshal D P Joshi had categorically said that the project was on the cards and the IAF will be selecting five Indians to undertake a mission to land on the Moon. Joshi had said that Isro, in fact, had tasked the IAF to prepare what is known as the air staff requirements for manned lunar landing. He said that prior to this landing, there will be an unmanned mission to the Moon with a rover between 2015 and 2016.

The Air Marshal added that the right type of equipment for choosing people for this ambitious mission had also been prepared at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine at Bangalore.

Joshi's colleague Air Marshal A K Behl, DGMS (Air), had told the channel: "The effort and work relating to the manned lunar mission has started and we are obtaining information from countries such as Russia and the US." He said the MoU between Isro and the IAF regarding the manned lunar mission was signed recently.

However, the space agency's statement, said, "Isro currently does not have any project on 'Man to Moon'. The scope of the MOU between Isro and IAM does not envisage recruitment of crew for Isro."

Speculation is rife that if this MoU was signed recently, then it could have been after Chang'e 3, China's first landing on the Moon on December 14, which has been described as a precursor to its manned lunar mission.

However, Isro officials told this newspaper that a manned mission to the Moon would call for huge arrangements. "The government has not even cleared our human spaceflight programme to the low Earth orbit. So, on what basis can the IAF even suggest a mammoth project like a manned landing on the Moon?" asked a space scientist.

But, his remarks have to be seen in the context of a statement made by Mylswamy Annadurai in 2009, who was then project director of Chandrayaan-1, that by 2020 India will be launching a manned mission to the Moon.